Why The US Ambassador To Russia Announced His Resignation On LiveJournal

On Tuesday the United States ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, announced he would be leaving his post in Moscow after the Sochi Olympics. He intends to return to his family in California.

In a tweet, McFaul, who had been ambassador since January 2012, blamed his decision on a "9,000 km commute" to see his wife and children that "just doesn’t work." But you can predict a lot of people will view his resignation in more negative terms. He was selected as part of President Obama's plan to "reset" the relationship with Russia, but McFaul's time in Moscow has been beset with diplomatic issues: the Magnitsky act, gay rights in Russia, the Russian adoption ban on American parents, perceived U.S. support for anti-Putin protesters, Syria, Iran, and many, many more.

To his credit, McFaul's farewell blog post addressed some of these issues, and strove to emphasize the positive side of the last two years of U.S.-Russia relations. You can read it here, but first, take a look at the address — yes, McFaul was posting to LiveJournal.

If you don't follow Russian politics, it might look like McFaul's choice of blogging platform is a symptom of an out-of-touch, 50-year-old former university professor: He might as well be posting on GeoCities. But in reality, McFaul's choice of platform is actually very astute.

McFaul's success on LiveJournal echoes his popular Twitter account, which he started two years ago and which has 60,000 followers. McFaul has tweeted almost 10,000 times, and has expressed fondness for the medium. "It's a medium that offers me great advantages as an ambassador trying to explain our policies to this giant country," McFaul told Foreign Policy early this year. "I can just go to my computer and talk with a scholar in Vladivostok or to an ecologist in Novosibirsk." McFaul also runs a Facebook page with almost 9,000 followers.